The
population registration act of
1950 required every citizen of
South Africa to submit to racial classification in one of three cataegories:
European (
White),
Black (African),
Coloured (
mixed race,
Indian,
Asian, other). Once this was in place, laws such as the
Group Areas Act were rapidly enacted based on this clasification.
It was thus a cornerstone of apartheid, both grand apartheid and petty apartheid.